Customer service agent Nancy Gresavage of Wegman's grocery store in Princeton pulls a Mega Millions lottery form for a customer in this file photo. A mystery winner who brought a ticket at a 7-Eleven in Elmwood Park lost the prize on Sunday, when the year-old ticket expired.Mike Roy/The Star-Ledger

ELMWOOD PARK — A million dollars came and went – and the winner may never have even known it.

A winning Powerball lottery ticket bought last year at a 7-Eleven in Elmwood Park expired on Sunday – and with it the million-dollar prize, state lottery officials said.

“Nobody came forward – it’s a mystery,” said Judith Drucker, a New Jersey Lottery spokeswoman. “We really don’t have a clue what happened to that person.”

The ticket was bought at the Boardway store some time last June, and it was a second-tier winner in the June 16, 2012 drawing, said Drucker.

The ticket, as is state law, expired on Sunday, exactly a year after the drawing, she said.

The winning numbers were 08, 14, 15, 16, 27 and the Gold Powerball Number was 26, Drucker said.

The mystery winner would not be alone in squandering some good luck. According to the state Lottery's latest annual report, some $37.7 million in prizes were forfeited for the fiscal year ending in June 2012, and $38.4 million the year prior. Drucker said New Jersey’s one-year deadline for claiming jackpots is relatively generous, since some other states require winners to claim prizes within just a few months.

But all is not lost – at least for the public at large, Drucker said. The $1 million forfeited by the unclaimed Elmwood Park ticket gets put back into the pot for the winnings of another state lottery instant game, the Million Dollar Replay, she explained.